What's your impression of this behavior?

[ianw2]

On Sunday afternoon, Laura and I went up to Riverside to Wiley’s Scuba Locker. We met Tony, the owner. We chatted about his and that. We talked about this and that. We discussed trips and dives. We got information on a few trips. We spent something like two hours there. Never once did he run down our local LDS (Sports Chalet). Never once did he speak down to us as new divers. Never once was he pushy.

Go back? Heck, yes! I’ll be back on Sunday to help out with a specific dive training project he has up his sleeve (no more info than that, Tony!!!).

Impressed? Heck, yes! We made a new friend!

Oh, BTW, I did buy the three clip on bullet weights I wanted, too!

Big difference between the experience of the OP and ours. Notice that there’s a big difference in the amount of business that the OP and I will be passing the way of the owner of the LDS we visited.

Ian Wilson

 

[Fishstiq]

I agree with mst of what people are saying on this topic, but i have 1 exception. there is a lds near me that i had a bad experience with and i discourage others from going there if they ask. At other shops, very rarely will i hear an employee talk badly about another shop, but nearly all of them will either plainly speak badly about the shop where i had a bad experience or at the very least sigh loudly and shake their heads, too polite to voice their thoughts. I wish someone had told me earlier that the lds in question had a bad reputation in my local dive community.

 

[Alex777]

<< I wish someone had told me earlier that the lds in question had a bad reputation in my local dive community. >>

But this thread is about employees at one LDS dissing another - everyone agrees it's a bad business practice that usually backfires. If you don't work in the dive industry, you SHOULD speak your mind and share your experiences about LDSs in your neighbourhood. I'll be happy to give you some frank opinions on Grand Cayman LDSs because I'm not running down a competitor.

 

[ajames54]

On the down side, I am also not impressed with people who make their case for competency by disparaging others.

Just wondering what your thoughts might be about this guy and his behavior.

It is sadly not at all that uncommon, I spent years in retail..managing camera stores and eventually owning a bicycle store. I always told my staff that no matter what their personal opinions of the competition or the competitions products were, if a customer asks the only OK response is something along the lines of "They do a pretty good job, but I think we ..."

I wish I had this thread years ago to show them the responses here.. it would have made things easier.

 

[Diver0001]

Yeah, at my day job I work for a consultancy firm and we're always competing for business with 4 or 5 other similarly sized companies in the same business. The culture here isn't to call the other guy the "competitor" or the "enemy" or anything like that, especially to the clients. We call them 'collegue companies' or 'associate companies' and it does make a big difference to how your clients view you.

R..